


We Go Home

by micehell



Category: Velvet Goldmine
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-31
Updated: 2011-03-31
Packaged: 2017-11-12 00:18:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/micehell/pseuds/micehell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You must be in heaven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Go Home

Title is from a Lou Reed song, even though the fic is happier than the song actually is. ;)

~*~

The diner is old; pock-marked brick, scuffed linoleum, vinyl seats patched to keep the stuffing in. It’s something out of the American past, immortalized in black and white films full of grizzled men who packed heat and fell for the wrong kind of dames and wound up dropping their perpetual cigarettes in their perpetual cups of black coffee as they waited for Nemesis to collect the price of their hubris.

Arthur slides into an open booth, bouncing a little against the vinyl seat. “Mmm, I smell hamburgers, fries, and fresh cherry pie. Your favorites. You must be in heaven.”

Curt collapses in the seat facing him, cradling his head on the tabletop, too sleepy from it being what-the-fuck-are-we-doing-up-this-early o’clock to bother to answer. He’s years ago given up reminding Arthur that he’s the one that always wants to come here, not Curt, and sleeping through the far-too-perky-for-this-early-in-the-morning waitress taking their (and by their, he meant Arthur’s) order is both passive protest and much needed rest, win-win all the way.

“I’ll have the turkey and sprouts on whole wheat, only mustard, no mayonnaise, and a side salad with that. And he’ll have the bacon cheeseburger with fries and a coke.”

Far-too-perky smiles far too perkily (Curt can feel it even through his closed eyes) and burbles, “The usual then! It’ll be right out!”

Her exclamation points smack up against Curt even after she leaves, and he curls his hands around his ears too late to really help. He asks the table (which his face is resting against now since his hands are busy saving his ears), “Considering this place is open twenty-four hours a day, and considering the waitress on the night shift doesn’t need to listen to twenty-four hours straight of The Smiths just to save everyone else from her obviously demonic perkiness, why do we have to come here so early all the time?”

Arthur’s still bouncing against the old springs in the bench seat, potentially trying to find a comfortable spot (which would be something of a miracle), or maybe trying to see if he can make more of the springs go bad so the seat’s _uniformly_ uncomfortable. “It’s past ten already. This actually counts as lunch hour for some people. You know, _normal_ people, who don’t consider this the wee hours of the morning.”

Curt just grunts his reply, needing to save his energy to survive. He thinks of his bed, his soft, comfy bed, and hates the springs in the seat below him that are trying to get more intimate than he’s okay with. He moans out loud at the injustice of living with a morning person.

Fluent in Curt, Arthur just laughs. “Love you too.”

Satan’s gift to perkiness brings their food soon enough to not make a total lie out of her ‘right out!’, and Curt deigns to sit up, because too early or not, melted cheese is always good and one thing about the diner that makes up for the seating is the fries, soft and light on the inside, crunch and salty on the outside. He could eat them just as is, but knows the danger in that, so he grabs the ketchup, squeezing out an eruption of virulent red over the mountain of fries. He scoops up a handful, shoving them in his mouth regardless of the mess he makes of his face.

Arthur clucks at him. “You look like the slowest girl in the dorm in a slasher movie.”

Curt laughs around the fries. He doesn’t know how true it is, since 1) he can’t see himself, and 2) he freely admits to not being able to watch anything scarier than _Bambi_.

Primly taking a bite of his salad, Arthur looks at the fries and shakes his head. “When we first started coming here, you ate the fries plain or with just a little bit of mayonnaise, but now it’s more like you’re having a little bit of fry with your ketchup. Why do you have to drown the poor things like that?”

Swallowing another mouthful, Curt says, “When we first started coming here I didn’t know about your habit of ordering _healthy_ foods and then stealing the actual good tasting stuff off my plate. But now I also know you don’t like ketchup, so this way I get to keep all my fries.”

Arthur stops chewing on his salad, a spiral of carrot sticking out of the corner of his mouth, and stares balefully at him. “The romance is dead.”

Curt takes a bit of his cheeseburger, enjoying the completely unhealthy, bacony goodness and agrees. He doesn’t mention the handful of fries he’s saved from death by ketchup, hidden under a spare napkin, because that’s what he’s going to use to distract Arthur from trying to have just ‘one’ bite of his pie later.

They’re like Jack Spratt and his wife, or maybe like the Odd Couple, Arthur neat and clean and so yuppily healthy with his lean turkey and sprouts and stolen sips of Curt’s soda that he takes while Curt wipes grease off his chin. Their knees bump comfortably under the table as Curt eats the cherry pie the demonically perky but soon to be well-tipped waitress brings without them asking for it. Arthur eats his illicit fries, free from any trace of ketchup, and only steals one bite of pie.

Outside the diner is all shady Brooklyn backstreet without much traffic, mostly quiet except for a couple of kids shooting their finger guns at each other and some Beastie Boys blasting from a car parked down the block. Even though it’s still way too early to be up, Curt leans over and kisses Arthur, tasting fries and pie and lazy Sunday mornings, and says, “Let’s go home.”

/story


End file.
